‘Do everything necessary to take the field’

A mentor to many national stars in both the men's and women's sides, Nazmul Abedeen Fahim reflected that it was high time that training of national cricketers commence in some form.

"The thing is that our players, who play international cricket and those belonging near that group, have been completely out of cricket for a while now. This has never happened before and will tremendously set our cricket back," he told The Daily Star.

He was of the opinion that Bangladesh would fall behind when international cricket returns, unless there is a way to keep cricketers active.

"Even if we don't play international cricket, our core players need activity on the field. They could participate in matches among themselves or camps in a controlled environment.

"Our rivals will get ahead if they take the field before us and when we do, we will have to start international cricket without proper preparations. If we stay away from cricket for another four months, we need to consider what will happen to our main players. Not just the mental impact but physically, for instance eye speed, agility, reaction speed will take time to readjust. We need to give them that time," he said.

"The way that others have managed to train players, if we could make an exclusive arrangement to bring together a group of 20 to 25 players to a certain place, test them to find out if they are [Covid-19] positive or negative and train them, that would be great. The players are frustrated right now.

"For example, if we could sterilise the Mirpur Academy and make sure those who work there are negative, players can be taken there.

"It was alright that things halted initially and we had to suffer and sacrifice a few months. But now we're looking at an indefinite time period. Now it is time we take the field and take steps to ensure at any cost how it can be done, no matter how much needs to be invested or how difficult the safety protocols are," he concluded.